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Monday, June 6, 2016

No a Bernie Sanders Win in California Won't Save Him

I had a long Twitter argument with Bill Scher for his Politico piece that argued that with a CA win, Bernie gets all this leverage at the Dem convention. Scher doesn't claim he'll get the nomination but he'll have more leverage.

Because if you win CA by 2 points then all the other big states where you lost by double digits are besides the point. The SDs will have to flip.

Greg Sargent makes a very important argument this morning. After tomorrow night, Hillary will have a majority even of the pledged delegates.

So Bernie in effect will be doing exactly what he says is wrong: for the SDs to override the pledged delegates based on actual votes.

That is a totally unsupportable position particularly in light of his own Holy War against SDs.

Despite the fact that his own manager, Tad Devine, invented them and Jesse Jackson as part of his own reforms in 1988 actually increased the number of SDs. One good sign: Jesse Jackson is speaking privately with Bernie-getting him used to the idea that we need unity not a brokered convention.

"It’s looking likely that news organizations will declare Hillary Clinton the presumptive Democratic nominee tomorrow evening: A sizable win in New Jersey, plus Clinton’s large lead among super-delegates, will lead them to project her the winner even before we know the outcome in California. Bernie Sanders is already contesting this argument, claiming that the nomination will not be official until the super-delegates actually vote at the convention to make her the nominee. And he’s right about that."

And there are 40 SDs ready to choose her but waiting till tomorrow night-ie, in reality she is already there. But Sargent hits on the crucial point why Bernie has no tenable argument even if he wins California-and we don't know that he will.

"But something else is all but certain to happen tomorrow night that could further complicate Sanders’s efforts to sway the final outcome, once the voting ends."

"It’s this: Clinton will finally clinch a majority of the pledged delegates, i.e., the delegates that are bound by the voting in primaries and caucuses. The upshot of this will be that at that point, the only thing keeping Sanders’s candidacy alive will be the existence of super-delegates and the possibility of flipping them, and Sanders has regularly blasted their very existence as undemocratic. In other words, after tomorrow, in a world where super-delegates didn’t exist, Clinton would be the winner of the nomination."

"Here’s the math. There are a total of 4,765 delegates — 4,053 pledged delegates, and 712 super-delegates, who support the candidate of their personal choice. To get the nomination you need a majority of the overall delegates, i.e., 2,383 of them. Clinton will not have this outright majority through pledged delegates alone, and will need super-delegates to put her over the top. That won’t formally happen until the convention, but news orgs will project her the winner, since she is already estimated to have 548 of the super-dels in her corner."

"But after tomorrow, she will have finally won a majority of those pledged delegates for the first time, and the voting will be all but over (except for the D.C. primary next Tuesday). Right now Clinton leads Sanders by 1,809-1,520 among pledged delegates. (If you include super-delegates, the totals are 2,357-1,566, but again, that’s not official.) If Clinton wins only one third of the nearly 700 remaining pledged delegates at stake tomorrow — and she’ll win far more — she will have at least a 2,027 majority of the 4,053 pledged delegates. This will be the case even if Sanders wins California."

So much of Bernie's populist rhetoric has been contradicted. He says he has no Super PAC even though he does.

He says that money is everything in campaigns. Yet he has outspent her by 2 to 1 and 3 to 1 and lost by double digit in large, diverse state after large, diverse state.

He has spoken of a rigged electoral system but the most rigged aspect has been the caucus system where he's gotten most of his wins.

Now he will be the candidate who wants SDs to decide the nomination. Any credibility he ever had will be stricken.

By the way, maybe Bill Scher does get it: he just RTed Greg Sargent's piece.

What's clear is that Hillary is actually a stronger nominee than many previous Dem nominees in that she actually will get the nomination through pledged delegates alone, unlike Obama, Dukakis, Mondale, etc.

P.S. Gabriel Debendetti on coming major Hillary endorsements.

Don't expect an endorsement flood from holdouts—Obama, Biden, Warren—just yet. Makes more sense for Team HRC to get 3 individual bounces."

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Confessions of a Conservative

About Me

I wear your scorn like a badge of honor. After all they killed Socrates as well.
But if you really want to get to know me I say Plato, Nietzsche, Keynes, Garry Wills, and Michael Lind.
Read those five gentlemen and you will get a major clue on how I view this thing called human society.
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